Integral Ad Science, which specializes in evaluating media quality for online advertisers, has acquired Veenome, a highly complimentary startup that measures specific contextual attributes of video ads. Veenome looks at web pages to determine things like whether ads are played in-banner or in-stream, how many players are on a page, what kinds of content is displayed, where the player was positioned, and more. Veenome builds on Integral's existing video ad evaluation technologies.

In a briefing, David Hahn, Integral's SVP of Product Management, said that he's been talking to Veenome CEO and co-founder Kevin Lenane for a couple of years and that their visions of the importance of ad context were well-aligned. The companies began talking about a partnership last December and then jointly realized there was more upside in an outright acquisition.

Although viewability and fraud have become the hot buttons of the industry, David and Kevin see a still broader set of quality metrics that both advertisers and publishers must incorporate into their decision-making.

For example, David notes that an ad's value on a premium news site like NYTimes.com inherently has more value than on a blog site. But even within a given site - no matter how premium -  not all ad placements have the same value. The Integral-Veenome premise is that only by drilling down to understand the attributes of the specific page and video stream can an ad's true value be determined.

Kevin notes this has become even more critical as some content providers, in the wake of adhering to new viewability standards and tight inventory, have become more aggressive with ad clutter. This in turn diminishes the value of individual ads.
 
David said that Veenome's technology will initially be integrated into both its Marketer's Edge solution for agencies and advertisers and its Trader's Edge solution for programmatic DSPs and SSPs. Later this year it will be integrated into its Seller's Edge solution for content providers. The goal in all cases is to help establish a digital media currency which provides greater value to both buy and sell sides.

All Veenome employees will join Integral and Veenome's office outside Washington, DC will become a video ad tech development center.